1. Field
The present disclosure is generally related to billing for printing costs, and, in particular, to a customizable system and method of billing for printing service costs by examining and weighing the content of pages that are printed.
2. Description of Related Art
As is known in the art, printing systems or output devices such as multi-function printers (MFPs) mark a printing substrate such as paper with multiple colors of ink or toner to produce color images. Color images may be printed in a variety of colors or comprise a single color (i.e., monochromatic).
Each color image comprises a number of pixels which correspond to a defined location in the image. Each pixel of an image is assigned a number representing the amount of light or gray level for that space or that particular spot, i.e., the shade of gray in the pixel. The pixels may be defined in terms of a color space (or gamut), typically with three values, such as RGB—R for red, G for green, and B for blue—or four values, such as CMYK—C for cyan, M for magenta, Y for Yellow, and K for black.
Images that have a large range of shades of grays are referred to as grayscale images. For example, an 8-bit value comprises 256 values or shades of gray for each pixel in the image. Grayscale image data may also be referred to as continuous tone images or contone images. In some instances, it is possible to create the impression of a continuous tone image by using a process such as halftoning, such that the image data is converted and “appears” to be a continuous tone image. The halftone process is generally known, and various methods for halftoning exist.
When printing color images (e.g., a monochromatic or monochrome image versus a color image), the quality and amount of image content of each page may affect the cost of printing. Generally, it is more efficient to use a black toner rather than a combination of color toner (or ink) as the cost of using multiple colors increases when printing color and/or monochrome pages. Therefore, users may tend to print binary grayscale images or decrease the printing of color images.
However, the cost of the toner is generally only about 20 percent to about 30 percent of the total cost per page that is incurred when using an output device or printing system such as an MFP. A user may be a customer and lease a printing system and be charged a “use” fee (e.g., monthly) and a “service” fee (e.g., when required or on a set schedule). The “use” fee is generally fixed; however, the “service” fee includes estimated fixed and variable costs, and a profit margin. Some of the estimated costs that are included in the service fee are toner usage costs, technician cost, repair costs, IT infrastructure costs, field offices costs, managers' and engineers' salaries, parts costs, labor costs, and the like. Thus, the service cost for printing color images may be significantly higher due to the number of costs included therein.
Some prior art systems have been designed charge a fixed amount for printed monochrome pages and another fee for printed color pages, regardless of the content in the printed page. However, such as “one size fits all billing approach” fails to take into account the objects that are in the page. Field data shows that there is a strong correlation between the service cost as compared to the page content or object types (e.g., text, line art, graphics, etc). For example, there are several types of monochrome and/or color objects that may be printed onto a substrate—monochrome low frequency halftone objects, color high frequency contone objects—which may affect the cost of printing a page. Therefore, color page prices may be lowered by limiting color service costs based on toner (or ink) usage.
Prior art methods have approximated the service cost associated with printing a page by applying a cost function that uses the aggregate toner area of coverage of the printed page, the printing medium substrate dimensions, and the finishing option applied. The aggregate toner area of coverage may be approximated by counting the aggregate number of color pixels (e.g., counting the number of the CMYK pixels within an object). This method does not take into account how the color pixels are distributed in a page (e.g., how the pixels are distributed and/or clustered), the kinds of objects in the page the pixels are used to form, or the pixel density.
Ser. No. 11/873,113, filed Oct. 16, 2007, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a method that includes detecting an object in the page and determining the approximate area of coverage of the detected object. This method and pricing model allows for determining how the color pixels are distributed in a page, the pixel density, and the type of object. However, this method generally assumes that the service cost is an exact or strict correlation of the current page content. Thus, the cost of a page was not updated based on the field data (e.g., the types of objects printed on the pages). The cost was fixed for the life of the machine or system and no field information was used to adjust the per-page cost to the customer or user.
In reality, the service cost of printing pages is a function of the object types (and their area of coverage) printed on a machine since its last service. For example, the service cost for printing color solid fill objects will be higher than printing monochrome text objects. Therefore, it is desirable not only to identify the type of objects being printing during the period of time between service visits, but to also apply a weight function for each object type printed to calculate the cost of printing such pages.